The league side of 2016/17. Twenty-third out of twenty-four. Relegation confirmed at the Charlton pig protest on 14 April 2017 — twelve days after Coventry City had lifted the EFL Trophy at Wembley in front of 74,434. Same supporter base. Three weeks apart. A factor of ten between the two crowds. This week Danny and Sarah do the hard work the Wembley story can't be honest without — the league, the boycott, the empty seats and the city around the stadium.

The Sky Blues Trust banners naming Joy Seppala and Tim Fisher. The SISU-era boycott as an act of faith with no expected payoff inside any reasonable timeframe — and the people who carried both a banner and a season ticket at the same time. Danny's confessional about the Southend home game on 14 March 2017, attendance 7,646: the radio he didn't turn on, and the not-feeling that scared him more than the score did. Sarah on doom-scrolling Coventry City from Brooklyn at three in the morning. Plastic pigs on the pitch on the day the maths closed.

Plus: Coventry as a city of reinvention four times over — ribbons, bicycles, cars, services. Coventry City founded in 1883 as Singer's FC. The 2021 City of Culture bid being written on page five of the Telegraph the same week the football club was being relegated on page four. The Brexit vote eight months earlier, Coventry 55–45 Leave. The factory-worker terrace pipeline gone, the badge being asked to do extra work because the other things that used to share the work — the factories, the precinct, the Two-Tone scene — aren't doing their share anymore.

The episode ends where the season did: the supporter base carrying both the banner and the season ticket, holding both objects in both hands, walking into the ground anyway.

Next week: Houchen in 1987 and Bigirimana in 2017. Both Wembleys, against the context this episode lays down.

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In this episode

• (00:00) - Comfortable. Boring. Long may it last" — then the floor
• (05:30) - Confirmation, confirmation, confirmation — then the certificate
• (08:26) - Two ladders — tenth and sixty-seventh
• (09:11) - Draws as deposits, wins as loans
• (11:24) - The Charlton draw was the death — plastic pigs on the pitch
• (13:08) - The moment it felt pointless
• (13:47) - The week I could have been Trevor
• (18:52) - The pause that says enough
• (18:54) - The question that doesn't arrive in 1987
• (19:51) - Empty seats outnumber the crowd — the swimming pool acoustic
• (22:27) - The boycott that took six more years
• (27:29) - The wake at a coronation
• (30:22) - The same shape — 1987 and 2017
• (31:19) - Anyway — the word of the season
• (31:58) - Attention versus will — the context next week must honour
• (34:13) - Geology, sediment, weather — the fan feedback loop
• (38:32) - The letters page, the timeline, and the gauge
• (46:13) - Page four, relegated — page five, City of Culture
• (59:18) - The barometer that pushed back
• (01:05:13) - Buying back a better-seeming past — the close

Featuring

Sources & credits
The Guardian archive, Wikipedia (2016/17 Coventry City season, League One table, EFL Trophy Final, Coventry FC history pages), and Perplexity AI for narrative scaffolding on Coventry's industrial reinvention and the City of Culture bid. Hosted on Microsoft Azure; AI pipeline supported by the Google Founder Programme. Show notes, transcripts and full archive: skybluetimemachine.com

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Full transcript
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